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Statement of 911 Health Watch on the House of Representatives Rejecting the Mulvaney Proposal that would have seriously harmed the administration of the World Trade Center Health Program.

June 30, 2018

The U.S. House of Representatives has decisively rejected Budget Director Mick Mulvaney’s proposal that would have seriously harmed the World Trade Center Health Program and the medical monitoring and treatment that it provides to over 86,000 9/11 responders and survivors who are in every State and in 433 out of 435 Congressional Districts across the country.

Earlier this year, the Budget Director proposed an existential threat to the carefully established and designed management and administration of the World Trade Center Health Program and could result in adversely impacting the health and wellbeing of thousands of injured and ill 9/11 responders and survivors.

He proposed to tear the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) by moving NIOSH to the National Institute of Health, while leaving the WTCHP as a free-standing entity within the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), without the expertise and experience that NIOSH has serving the 9/11 community.

This would have disrupted the critical management of the World Trade Center Health Program that has been running the Health Program that is providing medical treatment and monitoring to injured and ill 9/11 responders from the World Trade Center and lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and the Shanksville Crash site and medical treatment for survivors who were exposed to the toxins at Ground Zero.

The House of Representatives Appropriations committee unambiguously rejected this proposal when it came out with its Labor and Health and Human Services Budget bill for the coming Federal fiscal year and did not make the proposed changes that Mulvaney proposed and in fact in its official Report specifically stated that:

“The Committee does not move NIOSH into NIH, as proposed in the budget request. The Committee believes NIOSH’s mission does not align with NIH’s focus on biomedical research and is better achieved within CDC.”

911 Health Watch wants to thank Representatives Peter King, Nita Lowey, Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler for leading this bi partisan fight in Congress that successfully convinced their colleagues what a bad idea this was and protected the World Trade Center Health Program and its mission of providing health care to those injured by the toxins at Ground Zero.

This success is due to all the 9/11 responders, survivors and friends who made clear to OMB Director Mulvaney and Congress with their calls, emails and letters how this change would needlessly threaten the health of injured and ill 9/11 responders and survivors. Thru the efforts Jon Stewart, who helped to call attention to this threat, along with 9/11 responder Advocate John Feal and union leaders like Jake Lemonda of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association Local 854 IAFF, and Gerard Fitzgerald of the Uniformed Firefighters Association Local 94 IAFF, and many others.